Do MORE to prevent violence

By Gary Grant and Jeff Lara

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Waypoint Services for Women, Children and Families has launched the “10 Red Flags of Violence Against Women” awareness campaign that highlights warning signs for abusive behavior. We also urge community members to challenge the signs of violence wherever they encounter it.

In its last program year, Waypoint served nearly 1,000 women who were victims of domestic violence. While Waypoint is committed to helping them, we know that, ultimately, we cannot make a long-term impact on this pervasive issue by focusing only on the victims. Rather, we must seek to change the attitudes and behaviors that permit this culture of abuse.

Waypoint is helping through a community-based initiative called Men Organizing for Relationship Equality. MORE models a highly successful national program called Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), initially created to train male college and high school athletes and other student leaders to speak out against rape, battering, sexual harassment, gay-bashing, and other forms of abuse and violence.

In the local MORE program, adult male mentors are being trained to work with carefully selected young men - leaders in their respective peer groups - who are prepared to recognize that gender-based violence is unacceptable and take a stand against it. The young men learn to develop healthy, non-violent relationships with women and each other, and how to respond to harassment, abuse or violence.

The underlying message of MORE and the 10 Red Flags campaign is simple, but powerful: Take a stand. Refuse to abuse. Dare to lead. The campaign also reminds all of us that it is never acceptable to be a disengaged bystander in situations that encourage or allow violence.

We invite you to join the MORE Advisory Committee, become a MORE mentor or help identify young men who may be interested in participating in the MORE program.

Most important, you can be a role model for healthy relationship behaviors, intervene when you see signs of abusive behaviors, and teach children to treat others with respect - and to accept nothing less than respect from others.

For more information, contact Michael Shaw

at Waypoint at (319)

365-1458 Ext. 156 or

michael@ waypoint

services.org.

Gary Grant is owner of Grant Consulting and Jeff Lara is Senior Vice President at US Bank. Both serve on the Waypoint board of directors. Comments: gary@grantconsultingllc.com and jeff.lara@usbank.com